1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an optical anti-shake apparatus with a switchable light path, and more particularly to the apparatus that applies a switching device to drive an anti-shake device for performing switching operations so as to project one of two light paths onto an image capturing module via a lens module.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In an optical system consisted of an optical lens set and an image capturing module, such as a camera, a video recorder and so on, unexpected foreign forcing or hand shake of the camera and/or the video recorder may offset the light path so as to cause unstable imaging on the image capturing module. Namely, obscure images can hence be generated. One of many resorts in the art to resolve the aforesaid problem is to introduce a compensation mechanism for correcting the imaging. Such a compensation mechanism can be a digital compensation mechanism or an optical compensation mechanism. The digital compensation mechanism is to analyze and/or manage the digital image data captured by the image capturing module so as to obtain a clearer digital image. By the way, the digital compensation mechanism is also called as a digital anti-shake mechanism. On the other hand, the optical compensation mechanism usually introduces a shake-compensating device onto the optical lens set or the image capturing module. The optical compensation mechanism is also called as an optical anti-shake mechanism. The shake-compensating device is mainly to detect the deviation caused by the shaking upon the optical elements inside the optical lens set and further to have a driving member to tune the light path back to an optimal condition so as able to create a clearer image.
Currently in the marketplace, various 3C products, such as notebook computers, tablet computers, smart mobile phones and so on, are equipped with individual built-in cameras. Most of these built-in cameras are single-lens-ed. Seldom, some 3C products may have their own image modules with individual dual-lens units. Typically, the two lens of the dual-lens image module are located at different light paths. For example, in the smart mobile phone or the tablet computer having a dual-lens image module, the two light paths of the front lens and the rear lens are constructed along opposing 180-degree directions. Thereby, two sets of the image capturing modules are required to account for the follow-up image processing for the respective images captured from individual light paths. As a result, the 3C products can be made light and thin. Further, the 3C product may pay more for including the dual-lens image modules.
Accordingly, an improvement of the optical apparatus to have a switchable device going with a common image capturing module for processing the image data captured from both light paths and further to include an optical anti-shake device for compensating possible deviations resulted from unexpected/expected shaking during image capturing is definitely welcome to the skill in the art.